The president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, expressed this Sunday his recognition to the Government of China for the donation of 5,000 photovoltaic systems intended for the island to "change its energy matrix" amid the severe supply crisis that the country is experiencing.
"We deeply appreciate this gesture from the Chinese people and Government, which adds to the efforts that Cuba is making to change its energy matrix, amid the genocidal blockade," the leader stated in a message published on social media alluding to the blockade imposed by the United States against the island.
The head of the Cuban State shared and commented on a previous post by the Minister of Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, Oscar Pérez-Oliva, in which it was detailed that the aid from the Asian giant consists of 5,000 photovoltaic systems aimed at rural areas, health centers, children's circles, and bank branches.
Focusing on the energy crisis that shakes the island, leaving long partial and total blackouts, Díaz-Canel spoke at an international meeting of communist and workers' parties. He assured that "the total suffocation" to which the United States subjects the island constitutes a "collective punishment" that seeks "through the deprivation of the most basic resources and services to survive, to promote fatigue, discouragement, and social fracture with the aim of destroying the Cuban socialist project."
"They cannot be called anything less than criminals and fascists, those who sadistically devise an energy siege against an entire nation, leaving a humanitarian toll of alarming proportions that deprives Cuban children of life at birth, that reduces the life expectancy of cancer patients, that denies our people access to medicines, food, electricity, water, transportation, and many other resources for a full life," the head of the Executive stated.
Following that, the Caribbean leader explained that the country had "recovered" with a "huge effort more than 100MW" of power for electricity generation in a group of distributed generation islands. "If we had those 100MW available every day, the blackouts in Cuba, the annoying blackouts would only last three hours and not 20 or more hours," he added.
Currently, the Caribbean country is going through a complex situation as, to the six decades of embargo in force on the island, the United States has added since the beginning of the year an energy blockade that has caused, on occasions, the absolute paralysis of the supply.