The example of sovereignty that the Cuban people and government have given to the world is the greatest threat to the decadent U.S. empire, now led by President Donald Trump.
The administration established in the United States after the rise to power of a neo-fascist elite cannot allow the model of a small island to prevail in Latin America. This island has provided selfless support in recent decades to nations suffering from natural disasters or diseases, despite enduring an illegal economic, commercial, and financial blockade that has lasted for more than 60 years.
This paradigm of Cuba is what they want to destroy by any means. Above all, they want to isolate the island and try to starve its people, as Spanish Capt. Gen. Valeriano Weyler attempted to do by establishing concentration camps against the Cuban population between 1896 and 1898—an action that caused the death of more than 200,000 civilians.
Trump signed an executive order Thursday declaring a “national emergency,” based on the supposed “threat” that Cuba represents to the United States and the rest of the region. This declaration is logically absurd to the international community, as the island has no military resources that could attack Washington, but it does have the moral authority to confront these lies.
The document authorizes Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to take all necessary measures to implement a system of tariffs and related measures against countries that sell or supply oil to Cuba. This is the “Donroe Doctrine,” Trump’s adaptation of the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed “America for the Americans” — meaning America for the United States.
On his X (formerly Twitter) account, Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez denounced the move: “This new measure demonstrates the fascist, criminal, and genocidal nature of a cabal that has hijacked the interests of the American people. Under a mendacious and baseless pretext… President Trump intends to strangle the Cuban economy by imposing tariffs on countries that sovereignly trade oil with Cuba.”
Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossio declared: “If this demand is accepted, it will inaugurate a new and grotesque chapter of global subservience, opening a dangerous path… from which no state with any notion of sovereignty can feel safe.”
Statement by the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Jan. 30, 2026
We condemn in the strongest terms the new escalation by the United States against Cuba. Now they propose to impose a total blockade on fuel supplies to our country.
To justify this, they rely on a long list of lies that attempt to portray Cuba as a threat it is not. Every day there is new evidence that the only threat to the peace, security, and stability of the region, and the only malign influence, is that exerted by the U.S. government against the nations and peoples of “Our America,” whom it attempts to subjugate, plunder, and deprive of their independence.
The U.S. also resorts to blackmail and coercion to try to force other countries to join its universally condemned policy of blockade, threatening them with arbitrary and abusive tariffs in violation of all the norms of free trade.
We denounce before the world this brutal act of aggression against Cuba and its people, who for more than 65 years have been subjected to the longest and cruelest economic blockade ever applied against an entire nation, and whom the U.S. now promises to subject to extreme living conditions.
Source: Cuba en Resumen; Translation: Ed Newman, Radio Havana Cuba
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