Peace advocates noted Thursday that the near-unanimous vote by United Nations member states to call for an end to the US economic embargo against Cuba underscores the need for the Biden administration to lift the crippling 60-year blockade.

"What would Cuba be like today if the blockade had not impeded its development?"

For the 30th year in a row, members of the UN General Assembly voted in favor of a Cuban resolution condemning the embargo first issued by then-President John F. Kennedy's administration, which, according to historian and close associate Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. . he wanted to unleash "the horrors of the earth" on Cuba after Fidel Castro's profitable overthrow of a brutal US-backed dictatorship.

Thursday's vote was 185-2, with the United States and Israel dissenting and Ukraine and Brazil abstaining.

“The Biden administration is talking about the desire for a rules-based global order. Today's vote at the UN clearly shows that the global neighborhood calls on the United States to enforce its brutal embargo against Cuba," CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin said in a statement.

Manolo De Los Santos, vice president of the People's Forum, asked himself: "What would Cuba be like today if the blockade did not hinder its development?"

"It is impossible to quantify the pain caused by blackouts, long shopping trips, obstacles in the tasks of family life, especially for young people," he added. "Cuba has the best to live!"

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla mentioned this Thursday before the UN General Assembly that "more than 80% of current Cuban residents were born under the blockade," in what he described as a "malicious act of financial warfare." to "an eternal war". Pandemic, a constant hurricane”.

Rodríguez elaborated on Biden and added that “the current US administration does not have its own reports on Cuba. He acts out of indolence and persists in inhumanely reporting most of the charges introduced by the Donald Trump presidency.”

Rodríguez said the price of the embargo on Cuba was more than $6.3 billion, or more than $15 million a day, in the first 14 months of the Biden administration. In 2018, a United Nations commission estimated the total cost of the 60-year blockade on Cuba's economic system at least $130 billion.

CodePink members plan to demonstrate against the embargo in San Francisco on Thursday afternoon. This follows CodePink's #LetCubaLive protests in recent days in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, DC.

CodePink will cap off a week of action on Saturday by joining the Cuban-American group Puentes de Amor to send a plane carrying 8.5 tons of food and medicine to the beleaguered island.

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"Unfortunately," said Samantha Wherry, CodePink's coordinator for Latin America, "the handover is a small gesture compared to the billions of dollars in damage caused by the US blockade."

Peace activists have three demands: an end to the US blockade, the lifting of all economic and travel restrictions on Cuba, and the removal of Cuba from the US list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Since the victory of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, a dozen US administrations have come and gone.