The US Navy battleship arrived in Havana on 25 January 1898 for a routine visit, and days later, on the night of 15 February, a powerful detonation blew half the ship out of the water and eventually sank, killing more than half the crew.

Historians agree that it was a suicide attack, and the explosion was used as a pretext for Washington to intervene in the Cuban War of Independence against Spain, which ended with the US military intervention and the establishment of a republic in 1902, subject to the interests of the US government.

Recently, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez claimed that the US had become an instrument of destabilisation against this Caribbean island.

Regarding the cost of illegal actions against the Cuban Revolution, the Foreign Minister detailed that between 1998 and 2006, USAID allocated more than 66 million dollars for 142 projects and activities against the Cuban Revolution.

Havana has repeatedly denounced the use of organisations that claim to be humanitarian or defending democracy as fronts to undermine societies and as a pretext to intervene in their internal affairs.

This government agency, which is being questioned today by the administration of President Donald Trump, reminds Cubans that Washington is always hatching plots as sinister as those of the Maine.

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