July 6, 2026
A diplomatic cable leaked to The Nation, a U.S. magazine, shows the State Department instructing its embassies to pressure allied governments and choke off support for Cuba at the U.N. General Assembly debate on the tightening blockade, set for July 7. Marco Rubio acts like a viceroy of the empire, waiting for a humanitarian catastrophe to explode on the island.
The United States has climbed several more steps in its aggression against Cuba — the criminal blockade and measures of every kind designed to collapse the island’s economy. Facing the near certainty of another defeat at the United Nations over its strategy of economic suffocation, the State Department decided to pressure each country separately through its embassies. The plan, conceived by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was exposed in The Nation on July 2 by journalists Peter Kornbluh and Ken Klippenstein, working from a leaked three-page cable dated July 1. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla had anticipated the news at a June 30 press conference in Havana, denouncing Washington’s coercive threats as unprecedented pressure to head off yet another U.S. defeat at the U.N.
This is not the annual General Assembly session, scheduled for Oct. 27, where Havana traditionally calls for an end to the blockade. It is a special debate Cuba has requested in the face of what it calls an urgent situation created by the multiplication of attacks on its economy.
The Nation obtained the diplomatic cable, classified “Sensitive But Unclassified” (SBU) and titled “Engaging UN member states on July 7 UN General Assembly open debate on Cuba.” It contains Rubio’s instructions to U.S. embassies around the world to pressure their host countries with the aim of sabotaging the debate the island requested for July 7.
Washington’s first objective, according to the SBU cable, is to block the debate from being held at all. If that fails, the cable says the White House is encouraging “strongly aligned member states” to deliver remarks rebuking Cuba for what it calls devotion to a thoroughly discredited economic theory, gross incompetence and massive corruption.
This is the unprecedented character of the campaign that Rodríguez Parrilla pointed to in his denunciation: “an urgent situation, because the multidimensional aggression of the United States is already underway.” The strategy of the far-right regime headed by Donald Trump divides the world between countries that align with its policies — such as those that lined up under Washington’s tutelage in March 2026 under the so-called “Shield of the Americas” — and everyone else.
The aligned bloc includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, and Trinidad and Tobago. These Latin American nations, governed by right-wing or far-right presidents, will vote for any U.S. initiative. With Abelardo de la Espriella headed to the presidency of Colombia, that country is expected to join the bloc as well.
For the nonaligned, Rubio’s order is blunt: They must “refrain from delivering any remarks.” For countries that have traditionally supported Cuba, the cable records a direct diplomatic threat, without disguise. The United States, it warns, “will be listening very closely” to their remarks at the debate and discourages any points that might create “friction” in bilateral relations.
What Kornbluh and Klippenstein describe is a global gag being fitted over the community of nations. The strategy of the Washington hawks extends into diplomacy the politics of the Big Stick and of Operation Condor — a 21st-century version 2.0.
The leaked cable also exposes the U.S. narrative and its historic double standard. The State Department claims it “cares deeply about the Cuban people” and points to an offer of $100 million in aid. But the hypocrisy of the humanitarian argument is refuted by the record at the United Nations itself: 33 consecutive votes against the blockade since 1992, each one a defeat for the U.S. and its handful of allies — Israel, its privileged partner, among them.
The Nation article puts it plainly: Blaming Cuba for the growing humanitarian crisis while the Trump administration wages open economic war against the island — an oil blockade, sanctions on foreign companies operating there, threats against nations seeking to provide humanitarian aid — has become a favorite pastime in Washington.
Persisting against the overwhelming will of the community of nations, the United States ignores the U.N. or reduces it to a cartoon. The organization’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, declared on June 8, 2026, that sanctions packages so severe that they target entire sectors of an economy, with broad, indiscriminate and severe effects on the population, are incompatible with the basic principles of international human rights law.
Türk was sharp: “Children are dying because doctors lack access to essential supplies and medicines. This is unacceptable.” The United States, he said, has unleashed “the perfect storm” on Cuba.
The debate set for July 7 may establish a precedent with far-reaching consequences. The General Assembly will either censor itself and play the part of Washington’s docile flock, or reaffirm the spirit of the successive votes against the blockade that have handed the U.S. one defeat after another.
Source: Derribando Muros (Breaking Down Walls). Translated from Spanish.
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