Cuban embassy in Philippines closes down due to financial difficulties

Cuban embassy in Philippines closes down due to financial difficulties
June 17, 2013 12:24 PM
InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

MANILA - The Cuban embassy here in the Philippines is shutting down due
to financial difficulties brought about by the global economic crisis
and the United States' blockade.

"The global economic crisis affected us like everyone else, but the
continuing US blockade has doubled the ill effects of the crisis,"
former Cuban Ambassador to the Philippines Jorge Rey Jimenez told a
forum organized by the Philippine-Cuba Friendship Club late last week.

"Closing the embassy was a painful decision," the ambassador said.

Those who wish to transact with Cuba will have to deal with the Cuban
embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Jimenez said.

In the 1960s, after Fidel Castro and his fellow communists won the
revolution in Cuba, the United States imposed a commercial, economic,
and financial embargo. This was after Cuba nationalized the properties
of American citizens and corporations.

Dr. Francisco Nemenzo, former president of the University of the
Philippines and a member of the club, said Cuba and the Philippines have
a shared history: both were colonized by Spain for centuries, gained
independence from Spanish rule in the late 1800s, and sold to the
Americans soon after.

"We took separate roads only in 1959 when Cuba took the path to
socialism while the Philippines remained under America's sphere of
influence," said Nemenzo, who named his eldest after Fidel Castro.

Corazon Fabros, another member of the club, said Cuba recognizes the
close kinship between the countries brought by a shared history. "Cuba
didn't want to shut down their embassy here but the Philippines shut
down its embassy in Havana [last October] and that sort of decided it
for them," she said.

Sonny Melencio, another member of the club, regretted the closure.
"Which other ambassador can we invite to a forum like this to talk about
revolution?"

Veronica Uy, InterAksyon.com

Source: "Cuban embassy in Philippines closes down due to financial
difficulties - InterAksyon.com" -
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/64237/cuban-embassy-in-philippines-closes-down-due-to-financial-difficulties