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Vancouver Plays Chess for Che & Cuba! |
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An Afternoon of Chess, Art, Prizes & Fun Celebrating Che Guevara's 95th Birthday!
Saturday, June 10
1:00 - 3:00pm
Grandview Park
1255 Commercial Drive, Vancouver
Across Cuba today, chess is a popular activity in public squares, clubs, schools and competitive tournaments. This is one of the many legacies we can attribute to revolutionary leader Che Guevara! From Che Guevara’s youth as a competitive player in Argentina, to his work to promote and organize chess across Cuba in the years following the Cuban Revolution, chess was an activity that Che valued and enjoyed. In honor of Che’s birthday, the Che Guevara Studies Center in Cuba is holding chess tournaments in Cuba, and calling upon Cuba supporters and solidarity groups globally to join in playing chess to commemorate Che!
Today Cuba is facing over 6 decades of a brutal U.S. travel and trade blockade, made even more difficult with U.S. President Biden’s refusal to remove Cuba from the U.S. State Department’s List of State Sponsors of Terrorism. Historically chess has also faced the malicious maneuverings of the U.S. blockade against Cuba. During Cuba’s 1965 International Chess Tournament, the U.S. State Department denied U.S. Chess Grandmaster Bobby Fischer a visa to travel to Cuba, but he still joined the tournament by transmitting his chess moves by telex (electronic messages) from New York! In 1988, Cuban Grandmaster Guillermo Garcia Gonzales took second place in the New York Open Chess Tournament, but the U.S. Treasury Department used the “Trading with the Enemy Act” to confiscate his $10,000 prize. The U.S. blockade impacts essential trade including food, medicine and fuel, and tries to keep U.S. citizens and institutions from advancing friendly relations with Cuba. The U.S. government’s 60 year immoral and criminal blockade is up against Cuba’s commitment to advancing their revolution, and spreading humanity through international solidarity.
Join Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba (VCSC) for an afternoon of friendly chess matches, art, prizes and fun celebrating Che Guevara’s 95th birthday! Don't forget to bring your chess set if you have one!
Join the Facebook Event:
We acknowledge that this event will take place on the unceded and traditional territories of the x?m??k??y??m (Musqueam), S?wx?wú7mesh (Squamish), and s?lilw?ta? (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. As we defend Cuba's right to self-determination, we also stand with Indigenous nations and defend their right to self-determination.
Organized by: Vancouver Communities in Solidarity with Cuba (VCSC)
Endorsed by: Friends of Cuba Against the US Blockade - Vancouver
778-882-5223 |
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STATEMENT RE: The Canceled Designation of Honorary President to Cuban Poet Nancy Morejón in France |
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The Canadian Network on Cuba is appalled by the treatment in France of distinguished Cuban Poet Nancy Morejón, by the Paris Poetry Market (Marché de la Poésie). Nancy, an internationally recognized poet and academic, was the first Black woman to win Cuba’s National Literature Prize and her considerable body of work touches on Black Cuban history and culture, women, and much more. The poetry festival’s 40th edition (June 7 to 11 in Paris) gave Honorary Presidency to Nancy Morejón, but then suddenly withdrew it after a campaign by right-wing activist and writer Jacobo Machover, who lives in Paris. The PEN Club of France protested the honour to Morejón because she supports the Cuban government.
The shameful decision of the Poetry Market to cave and withdraw its merited invitation of Honorary President to Nancy sustains the glaring fact that the real censorship of Cubans comes from outside of Cuba.
This attack on Morejón is part of an orchestrated repression of Cubans who are faithful to the Cuban people, such as Buena Fe, a music group on tour in Spain, who in the midst of right-wing hardliners violently disrupting several of their performances, and attacking its singer Israel Rojas in a Barcelona restaurant, have pressured venues to cancel some scheduled concerts due to threats to the safety of the musicians and fans.
Artists and writers around the world have condemned this recent treatment of highly respected and creative Afro-Cuban woman Nancy Morejón. The CNC adds its voice to those condemning the attempts to silence a great Cuban poet. We join protests from UNEAC, the World Poetry Movement, the International Union of Left Publishers, and others.
Nancy Morejon’s incredible work and legacy should be shared with the world, but instead, we see this effort that is congruent with the imperial onslaught and economic, media and culture war against Cuba, attempt to silence her. The Canadian Network on Cuba offers its support and solidarity with Nancy Morejón and to all Cubans who are standing up to unjustified, malicious attacks.
Samantha Hislop Julio Fonseca
Co-Chairs, Canadian Network on Cuba |
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From The Hill Times |
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OPINION | BY JIM HODGSON | April 27, 2023
Jim Hodgson is the former program coordinator for the United Church of Canada’s partnerships in Latin America and the Caribbean. Photograph courtesy of Jim Hodgson
An informal alliance of Canadian churches, trade unions, development agencies, and other civil society groups is encouraging the federal government to increase aid to Cuba in this time of exceptional need, and to press the United States to ease its sanctions.
On April 13, more than 20 organizations— including Oxfam, CARE, and the United Church—wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Me?lanie Joly and International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan. In the letter, they express their alarm at the “deterioration of the Cuban economy and consequent impacts on the Cuban people.”
While Canadian tourists began to return to Cuba this past winter, effects of the three-year pandemic linger and are magnified by the decades-long imposition of sanctions (sometimes referred to as the “embargo” or the “blockade”) by the U.S.
Worse still, the administration of then-U.S. president Donald Trump put Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism, and the current Joe Biden administration has kept it there, making financial transfers and trade more difficult.
The logic of the sanctions has always been to cause sufficient dissatisfaction so as to provoke regime change. Just 16 months after the 1959 triumph of the Cuban Revolution, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for inter- American affairs Lestor Mallory told his superiors in a memo that most Cubans supported the change.
“The only foreseeable means of alienating internal support is through disenchantment and disaffection based on economic dissatisfaction and hardship,” wrote Mallory.
Throughout these past six decades, Canada has taken a different approach to Cuba. Those who signed the letter to Joly and Sajjan noted that Canada and Mexico were the only two countries in the Western hemisphere in the 1960s to preserve diplomatic relations with Cuba.
Canadian civil society groups have come together now, as many did in the early 1990s when Cubans faced hardship in the wake of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Churches and aid organizations then convinced the Canadian government to work with them in co-financing of development projects.
Such efforts continue today. Most recently, Global Affairs Canada made a commitment of up to $4.6-million over five years to a CARE Canada project in Cuba’s Matanzas province. The project, titled She Produces Too, seeks to improve gender-equitable and sustainable food systems.
But more can be done. Canada, the groups argue, should “use its significant capacity to scale up its efforts to provide immediate food, medicines, and medical supplies to Cuba, and to do so directly through bilateral government to government relations ... [and] Canadian and Cuban civil society initiatives.” The groups note there is particularly urgent need for antibiotics, basic grains, powdered milk, and other dairy products.
The inter-agency letter also calls on Canada to work through multilateral spaces like the United Nations to increase support. Again, there is a recent example of Canada doing just that: between 2017-2024, Canada is providing $7.5-million to the United Nations Development Program to strengthen fruit production.
The impact of those projects could be magnified with a strong push to ease the American sanctions, at least to the level they were at the end of the second Obama administration.
The groups asked that Canada press the Biden administration “to remove Cuba from the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism, as the Obama administration had done in 2015.”
“The Trump administration’s decision to return Cuba to the list in 2021 has only produced harm to the people of Cuba,” they add, “limiting even financial support from individuals to family members and transfers among non- governmental organizations.”
There are bi-partisan initiatives in the U.S. Congress now to ease the embargo that are worthy of support.
Some of the signatories provide long-term financial support to partner organizations in Cuba. Others are solidarity groups with strong community connections in both countries.
In the face of the current crisis, most groups have stepped up their own efforts through activities such as shipping hypodermic needles, medicines (sometimes acquired in third countries), canned meat, and hygiene items. They also responded to emergencies last year in the wake of fires in Matanzas and a hurricane in Pinar del Rio.
“Given our close bilateral ties on the one hand, and the huge difficulties faced by the Cuban population on the other, any humanitarian and diplomatic support for the Cuban people would be enormously helpful and would benefit Canadian relations in the region,” the inter-agency letter concludes.
From 2000 to 2020, Jim Hodgson served as The United Church of Canada’s program coordinator for partnerships in Latin America and the Caribbean. He remains engaged in solidarity work and blogs at unwrappingdevelopment.ca
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Reg's Wish: Canadians Helping the Blind in Cuba |
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We Must Defend Our Country |
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We have an exciting webinar that will be happening this Friday evening, April 21st at 8pm EST, about The Bay of Pigs invasion, and within this theme, the lessons for today, and contextualizing its significance with regards to the United States' continual economic and disinformation assaults on Cuba in the present.
ARNOLD AUGUST has said that the sky is the limit, and is ready to discuss and answer questions on all things Cuba! He has shared links (below) to two relevant articles to our theme that he has written, and suggests that the audience might like to read them before the webinar: SERGIO de JESúS JORGE PASTRANA was orn July 27, 1950, in Havana, married, with two daughters and three grandchildren, Sergio Pastrana is currently the Cuban Ambassador, Chargé d´Affairs in Antigua and Barbuda. He was the former Cuban Ambassador in Barbados 2019 - 2023.
Having been the Foreign Secretary of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba and Executive Director of the institution for many years, he was elected Member of Honor of both, the Academies of Sciences of Cuba, Guatemala and the Caribbean. He was President of the Caribbean Scientific Union from 2005 to 2007. A historian and philologist graduated at the University of Havana, he took further studies at the Institute of International Relations of Cuba.
From 2003 to 2018, Pastrana was the Cuban representative to the Executive Committee of IAP, the Global Network of Academies of Sciences, where he chaired the Membership Committee. He was a member of the Executive Board of the International Council for Science (ICSU) (2005-2014) and Vice President (2012-2014). He has widely represented Cuban and Caribbean scientists at international meetings on science. A consultant to various UN agencies, he has been appointed special envoy of the Republic of Cuba for the signing of intergovernmental agreements, and has been official representative of Cuba, on behalf of Cuban scientists on many occasions. He has published numerous articles and book chapters in Cuba and abroad on the subject of the history of international relations of science, as well as on the advisory role of Academies of Sciences.  
Register for the Zoom Webinar:
https://us06web.zoom.us/.../reg.../WN_rXrMzUPvSrm7cJJIJGvVDw
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LETTER TO EDITOR IN CHIEF OF CBC RE: “As holidaying Canadians return to Cuba, Cubans themselves are fleeing in record numbers” by Evan Dyer |
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Tuesday, March 7th, 2023
What a superficial, dishonest, and biased article published by the CBC, penned by Evan Dyer. After reading, it looks like information gathered from Facebook, where, as you know, anything goes. The CBC’s mandate is to inform and enlighten, and this article does a grave disservice to that endeavor, and to the Cuban people.
Mr. Dyer, either out of sheer ignorance of the geopolitical context in which Cuba lives, or on purpose, fails to mention, even once, the system of punitive sanctions and ridiculous prohibitions which compose the Blockade (euphemistically called the “embargo”) that the US imposes on Cuba for 63 years now. It is the longest siege in history. It is an economic war on Cuban families, a campaign of persecution and intimidation aimed, besides Cuba, at third parties, who in exercise of their sovereignty, choose or intend to establish any kind of ties with the island. It is the main obstacle for the development of the country.
Just imagine the damage that this undeclared war on Cuba has had throughout the decades. Now add the economic crisis that the whole world faces because of the pandemic, which has hit Cuba severely, a blockaded underdeveloped country. And just when one thinks that it could not get worse, then President Trump, advised by the most rancid ultra-right elements of his party, maliciously imposes 243 additional sanctions on Cuba (Biden has only just allowed Western Union to reinitiate remittances to Cuba, although only from the US, and some travel to the island with restrictions).
Only very recently, the US restored visa services in their embassy in Havana, so those Cubans who in the middle of the current economic situation wanted to emigrate previously had to go to a third country, resulting in added costs and insecurity. The average Cuban faces incredible hardships while the government does its best to prioritize the essentials. The situation is bad. However, no hospital or school has been closed, and no one has been abandoned to their fate. There are no children sleeping in the streets in Cuba.
If he were really concerned about Cuba, Mr. Dyer should be asking Canadians to continue visiting Cuba to help its people and economy. Canadians who travel to Cuba regularly know better, and that’s why they keep going to enjoy the warmth and the culture of Cuba. And, most importantly, Mr. Dyer should recognize the real problem that Cuba faces – the inhumane Blockade.
Samantha Hislop
Julio Fonseca
Co-Chairs, Canadian Network on Cuba
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Cuba News and Events
Vancouver Plays Chess for Che & Cuba!
08/06/2023
An Afternoon of Chess, Art, Prizes & Fun Celebrating Che Guevara's 95th Birthday!
Saturday, June 10
1:00 - 3:00pm
Grandview P...
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We Must Defend Our Country
21/04/2023
We have an exciting webinar that will be happening this Friday evening, April 21st at 8pm EST, about The Bay of Pigs invasion, and within this theme...
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The World Says YES to Cuba!
08/11/2022
Join the Canadian Network on Cuba and friends of Cuba from all over the world!
November 17, 2022
5pm Vancouver | 7pm Winnipeg | 8pm Toronto | 9pm Halifa...
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