July 7, 2026
Speech by Cuba’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, in the debate of the United Nations General Assembly under item 38, “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba”:
Mr. President, excellencies, permanent representatives, distinguished delegates:
Against Cuba, the government of the United States is carrying out a multidimensional, unconventional war that has already lasted almost seven decades and has become harsher and more ruthless in the last seven months.
Now the energy siege has been added, equivalent to a naval blockade, which is an act of war. Access to fuel supplies to Cuba, both commercial and humanitarian, is being prevented through direct threats, unilateral coercive actions, and even the harassment or intimidation of tanker ships by U.S. military naval means.
There have been repeated threats of military aggression from the highest levels of the U.S. government, and public sources describe war options and preparations.
Added to the economic, commercial and financial blockade are unprecedented actions of extreme extraterritorial character, such as the use of secondary sanctions that follow the macabre plan of provoking in Cuba a humanitarian crisis and the total destabilization of the country, opening the way for or forcing a presidential order for an imperialist military intervention that would cause a bloodbath and the loss of many Cuban and U.S. lives.
When asked whether economic pressure against Cuba would continue to be intensified, President Donald Trump himself replied, and I quote: “I don’t think you can put much more pressure on, except go in and destroy the place.”
In these months, the humanitarian damage to our population has multiplied, with the deterioration of quality of life, the reduction of sources of subsistence, the limitation of the possibilities for personal, family and social development, and the massive, flagrant and systematic violation of the human rights of an entire people in an act of collective punishment.
All these are matters of great importance and urgency that deserve not only the attention, but the clearest pronouncement of the United Nations and its most universal and representative body, the General Assembly, by virtue of its mandate to preserve international peace and security and to ensure the enjoyment of human rights.
Cuban families, especially children and young people, and mothers, feel the suffering of prolonged and unbearable blackouts or power cuts. Often, when there is no electricity, there is also no drinking water. They know the anguish caused by the lack of medicine for a sick person. They are overwhelmed by the scarcity of food or the high prices of basic necessities.
The infant mortality rate of 4.0 per thousand live births has risen to 9.9. This means the death, avoidable under other conditions, with appropriate equipment, devices and treatments, of 1,780 newborns.
The number of people dying of cancer in the country has increased significantly. In the case of children and young people, survival has fallen from 85% to 65%. The trend coincides with the harshest moments of the U.S. siege.
The blockade suffocates and kills silently. Addressing this ruthless crime is also a responsibility of the United Nations.
The government of the United States, and especially its State Department, spread the lie that the blockade is not directed against the Cuban people, but only against the government. Ask the people of Cuba whether or not they suffer from the blockade. Even ask the diplomats, correspondents and other foreigners who live in Cuba.
We have listened, in an abuse of procedure, to the shameless intervention of the delegate of the United States. He did not refer to any of these issues that I have mentioned.
That is not surprising, because he represents the government responsible for the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the government responsible for dozens of military interventions and for protecting the bloodiest military dictatorships in Latin America and other regions.
It is the government complicit in the genocide taking place in Gaza, and in the repression in universities against the professors and students who protested against it. It is the government of the militarization of cities for political purposes, of brutal repression against immigrants, of the police hunt against them, and of the separation of small children.
It is not surprising, because the delegate represents the government responsible for dozens of extrajudicial executions in the Pacific, Atlantic and Caribbean oceans, under the pretext of actions against unproven international crimes.
These are the authorities responsible for police brutality against demonstrators in this country and for the significant increase in deaths in detention.
He represents the government responsible for the existence of a differentiated racial pattern that brutally discriminates against minorities, particularly African American and Hispanic minorities; the government of the largest prison population on the planet; the government of a penal and penitentiary system based on differentiated racial patterns.
He also represents the government that pays women lower wages for the same work.
I have been surprised by the violation of the rules of procedure of this Assembly and by having had to listen to that speech before the Assembly had agreed to hold a debate.
I do not know whether we will hear another speech from the United States, which, curiously, was the first country to sign up on the list of speakers, despite the fact that it has just objected to this debate taking place.
The cynicism of the U.S. delegation in this hall is fundamental. It has made a substantive intervention full of worn-out lies in an attempt to censor the Assembly’s right to debate precisely these questions.
Those who abused the rules of procedure to make substantive accusations — slanderous, but substantive — minutes before, or even while making them, argued that this debate should not take place.
They were trying to trample on the right of the General Assembly to address precisely this issue. They were trying to carry out an act of censorship, which may be possible in a Green Berets camp, but not in this great hall.
I do not know whether we will again hear in this session the worn-out argument of the U.S. government, according to which the fuel siege against Cuba does not exist, that the blockade is a mere justification by the Cuban government for its problems, and that the United States is only exercising the right to refuse to trade with Cuba and to apply a simple bilateral embargo.
It is a fallacy that does not withstand the slightest scrutiny, one that contradicts the actions of the U.S. government toward Cuba and toward all the states you represent. It is a lie that nobody believes — except the delegate who spoke — who has even minimal information or decency, which he possibly lacks.
The damages caused by the blockade — and I am going to give new figures — the damages caused by the blockade in the period between March 1, 2025, and February 28, 2026, at current prices, amount to a record figure of $8.083 billion, 7% higher than the previous year. The cumulative impact since its beginning reaches $178.7 billion at current prices.
Of course, these figures cannot include the extreme impact of the siege, of the total blockade of fuel supplies to Cuba, which began in the month of February itself.
These impacts are fundamentally the result of extraterritorial coercive actions that violate the norms of international law, international trade and freedom of navigation, in addition to violating the sovereign prerogatives of independent states, which you represent, in their right to relate to Cuba according to their own interests and laws.
Added to the measure of the brutal energy siege are others that have been imposed during the course of the year with the same purpose, by setting as their objective the compliance by sovereign governments with the illegitimate prohibitions imposed on them by the United States for trade with Cuba.
The government of the United States imposes on sovereign states, citizens and businesspeople that they abandon their relationship with Cuba, not because of their own interest, not because of commercial disadvantages, nor even by mandate of their own governments, but by the dictate of a foreign regime — in this case, that of the United States — which is supposed to have no jurisdiction or authority over the activities of citizens and businesspeople outside its borders.
Cuba, as a free, independent and sovereign state, rejects the claim that another country should dictate the form of government, the economic model and the foreign relations that our nation must adopt.
Probably, if the delegation of the United States decides to repeat its intervention, we will hear the mendacious arguments that the government of the United States usually sets out, and which the delegate has already anticipated, to justify the crime of genocide.
It would allege, as supposed evidence, selective figures of U.S. exports to Cuba, highly regulated, dependent on licenses or permits from that country’s government, in violation of the universally accepted rules of trade and freedom of navigation, and now limited almost exclusively to the private sector, which is also restricted in its economic ties with U.S. counterparts.
These exports do not contribute in any way to resolving the main problems that cause shortages and suffering for our people. They do not contribute — because the U.S. government does not allow them to — to recovering the capacity for electricity generation or drinking water supply.
The U.S. government does not allow exports that would contribute to the development of public transportation, nor to ensuring hospital services, benefiting education, or even protecting food supplies for the most vulnerable sectors of the population.
The delegate did not mention that the government of the United States made an offer of humanitarian aid, which was immediately accepted weeks ago by the government of Cuba, and which has been delayed and restricted in content for political reasons.
Nor did he allude to the fact that the U.S. delegation to the World Food Program was isolated in a vote in its attempt to block a food aid program for Cuba worth $116 million.
The U.S. delegation repeats and repeats, as an attempted justification, that the Cuban government is supposedly incapable.
Anyone present here could rightly ask: How can the problems mentioned by the distinguished delegate of the United States be blamed on the government of a country to which his government applies a genocidal blockade, and which has endured that economic aggression for almost 70 years, while nevertheless developing a great work of social and human development?
How could the Cuban government be blamed for the consequences of the total deprivation of fuel and other essential supplies imposed over the course of the last seven months? How could it fail to be recognized that, despite this, stability is maintained in Cuba, there is no large-scale humanitarian crisis, and there has been no wavering — nor will there be any wavering — in the defense of our people?
We are relieved and encouraged by collective solidarity, by the participation and effort of everyone, particularly women and young people in the communities, in the search for solutions, and by the intense and tireless work of the Party, the state, the government, the local bodies of People’s Power and the delegates of the population, and the organizations of civil society.
The sovereign — very sovereign — recent and profound economic and social transformations adopted by our National Assembly to adapt the Cuban socialist model to the harsh current realities, including the brutal and growing aggression of the United States, generate hope among our people.
We are grateful for the broad international support and cooperation of numerous governments, parliaments, political forces, organizations, solidarity movements and associations of Cubans living abroad.
The hostility and threat that Cuba faces today form part of a troubling sequence of violations of international law and are a prelude to what could happen tomorrow to any other country.
We must ask ourselves in this Assembly whether that is the new world order toward which we are heading. We must reflect on whether that supposed order would be consistent with the principles and reason for being of this organization; whether that is the path that will safeguard international peace and security, promote understanding among equally sovereign states, and foster cooperation, trade, development and respect for human rights.
It is indispensable to prevent this conduct of domination, plunder, occupation, dispossession and cognitive warfare from becoming part of an international order even worse than that of recent decades.
It is unavoidable to defend the founding values of the United Nations, international law and the Charter of the United Nations, and to uphold the promise to preserve present and future generations from the scourge of war.
There are bilateral diplomatic talks that the government of the United States proposed and Cuba accepted, in accordance with its tradition and its principles of foreign policy, with the frank and constructive spirit of trying to find a solution to bilateral differences.
But they show no progress, and it is difficult for them to do so if the expectation of those conducting them in Washington is to treat Cuba as a defeated or conquered adversary, as a colonial possession or a dominion over which the United States has jurisdiction and authority.
The data confirm that this aggressive conduct does not represent the interest of the majority of U.S. citizens. According to a study concluded yesterday, 98.3% of posts and comments on digital networks in the United States do not support the energy siege, do not support the blockade, and do not support aggression against Cuba.
That genocidal and criminal policy responds to the anti-Cuban and revanchist whim of a tiny but powerful and influential segment concentrated mainly in the south of the state of Florida, but which shows the capacity to manipulate the U.S. political system and guide the conduct of the current government.
I do not know whether the U.S. delegation will repeat in the next few minutes the ridiculous argument that Cuba represents a threat to the national security of the greatest military and nuclear power on the planet — aggressive, predatory, oriented toward imposing peace through force.
There is no statement by the Cuban government, no evidence and not the slightest indication that Cuba has set out to threaten the United States. No activity in Cuba can be identified that puts at risk the national security, the well-being of citizens or the competitiveness of the economy of that powerful neighbor.
Cuba is not a threat. The blockade is. The threatened nation is Cuba.
But we are a nation committed to and defending peace, international law, multilateralism, truth and justice.
A people that has been fighting for its freedom and independence for more than 150 years and that has written glorious pages by resisting all attacks on its feet will defend its independence and sovereignty to the utmost.
In the year of the centenary of the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, faithful to his legacy, the decision of Cubans will always be:
Homeland or death. We will win.
In video: Speech by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla before the UN General Assembly.
Translated by Struggle-La Lucha from the Spanish transcript published by Cubadebate.
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