Another shipment of humanitarian aid, containing more than 5,000 tons of food, medicine, supplies, and toys, departed today from Venezuela bound for eastern Cuba to assist those affected by Hurricane Melissa.
The vessel, carrying 102 containers, departed from the international port of La Guaira, in the northern state of the same name. The aid was sent by President Nicolás Maduro through the ALBA Bank, as reported on Telegram by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs for Latin America, Rander Peña.
He also announced that a brigade of electrical workers is traveling aboard the ALBA ship “Manuel Gual” to help repair the damage caused by the storm that struck the eastern provinces of Santiago de Cuba, Granma, Holguín, Las Tunas, and Guantánamo as a Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
Accompanied by the Cuban ambassador in Caracas, Jorge Luis Mayo, Peña declared that this aid is “a direct expression of solidarity and concrete support, on behalf of the Venezuelan people.”
He affirmed that “these are the ships that leave Venezuela and sail the Caribbean Sea, ships full of solutions, hope, and life, crossing the same sea that imperialism tries to use to threaten peace.”
“All our love goes out to the brotherly people of Cuba, with whom we have built an infinite and mutual loyalty,” emphasized the executive secretary of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America-Peoples’ Trade Treaty (ALBA-TCP).
He stated that the shipment contains “all our love, always infinite, which is the love of Commander Hugo Chávez for Fidel (Castro), the love of a son for a father, of two peoples who have been building an infinite and mutual loyalty.”
The ambassador from Havana, for his part, expressed the “eternal gratitude of the Cuban people for this Bolivarian generosity you have shown.”
Mayo emphasized that just when imperialism threatens Venezuela, the peoples of the Caribbean, and our America, “this love of friendship and exemplary solidarity” flows toward the island.
He noted that the union between the Venezuelan and Cuban peoples, in “that fraternal embrace between Fidel and Chávez,” heirs of Simón Bolívar and José Martí, and the continuity of Nicolás Maduro, Army General Raúl Castro, and President Miguel Díaz-Canel, “is nothing more than the consolidation of aid that you are reinforcing today in the face of this hurricane.”
The plenipotentiary emphasized that the Cuban people have witnessed this aid consistently when they need it most.
This is the second shipment of humanitarian aid from the Bolivarian Republic to Cuba, following the airlift of 26 tons of food and other supplies on October 30.
[ SOURCE: PRENSA LATINA ]
