September 26, 2026
Bruno at the UN
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla denounced at the UN on Saturday that his country is facing a multidimensional aggression by the United States government — a permanent, abusive, and ruthless hostility that has lasted for nearly seven decades.
“Since January 2026, this aggression has intensified and become more cruel and dangerous with the establishment of an energy blockade that, through intimidation and coercion, prohibits all countries from exporting fuel to Cuba; this amounts to a naval blockade, classified under international law as an act of war,” Rodríguez Parrilla stated during his address to the general debate of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Bruno Rodriguez noted that, through successive measures, the US government has progressively added prohibitions affecting all countries regarding products and services that cannot be exported or transported to Cuba.
Cuba’s top diplomat pointed out that more than seven thousand containers have been detained at various ports—many containing food, medicines, and medical devices, or even belonging to private Cuban companies.
“In an extraordinary and unprecedented move, a superpower unilaterally deprives all States of the right to export whatever products they wish to whichever country they choose, while comprehensively and consistently violating the freedom of trade and navigation.”
He argued that this is compounded by the intimidation of businesspeople from various countries, forcing them to abandon their investments and business dealings in Cuba against their will; the obstacles and traps designed to prevent the arrival of absolutely legitimate commercial shipments; the pressure exerted to halt the flow of visitors and tourists; and the concerted effort to limit, as much as possible, Cuba’s legitimate access to financing, technology, and markets.
“They go to the extreme of pressuring sovereign governments — to an unimaginable degree — to forgo medical services they had requested from us for the benefit of their own populations; services provided altruistically by Cuban professionals. They do this simply because the U.S. government opposes such cooperation, regardless of the impact or harm inflicted on the populations left without free, quality medical care — depriving them, in other words, of a fundamental human right,” he added.
Bruno Rodríguez emphasized that “the impact of such an ironclad and ruthless blockade has a human face. This economic war is directed against the people. It falls upon the Cuban population as a whole. It claims lives, causes individual and collective suffering, and breeds anguish.”
“It is not ‘collateral damage.’ It is a policy deliberately designed to strike Cuban families where it hurts most, to hinder their well-being, and to wound the dignity of the people,” stressed Bruno Rodríguez, who is also a deputy to the National Assembly and a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Cuba.
It is an act of collective punishment — a crime prohibited under international humanitarian law. The evident and immediate goal is to trigger a humanitarian crisis in Cuba, which also constitutes a crime, he noted.
The U.S. government and the State Department have been forced to acknowledge the suffering inflicted, yet they have the shamelessness and cynicism to insist on blaming the Cuban government. “The executioner blames the victim,” he stated before the assembly.
He recalled that “the President of the United States declared in this very hall just a few days ago that Cuba is a failed state. If that were the case, why did they have to impose a fuel blockade? Why did they implement secondary sanctions? Why do they have to threaten, persecute, and pressure every state on the planet?”
And Cuba’s foreign minister warned the global community that “the threat of the use of military force against Cuba persists– conduct that constitutes a violation of international law and a contravention of the San Francisco Charter.
“Were it to materialize [a military intervention by the U.S.], it would constitute a crime of great magnitude. It would result in the deaths of Cubans and young Americans, as well as massive destruction. We hope it never happens. Cuba would exercise its legitimate right to self-defense with full determination and energy.”
This aggression is accompanied — he explained by a brutal media and cognitive war, directed not only against the Cuban people but also at U.S. citizens and global public opinion. It is characterized by crude and undisguised attempts to interfere in Cuba’s internal affairs, which constitutes another international offense.
“We reject the Monroe Doctrine and its corollaries, just as we repudiate any attempt at militarization, intervention, or imperialist domination in Latin America and the Caribbean—a region proclaimed a Zone of Peace in Havana in 2014.”
In his address, which recalled the 66th anniversary of the historic speech delivered at this venue by Cuban Revolution leader Fidel Castro Ruz, he insisted: “We are convinced that the current course of international relations—characterized by disrespect for international law, disregard for the United Nations, and the imposition of the most powerful nation’s unilateral will upon other countries through intimidation and coercion—is dangerous and unsustainable.”
“The law of the jungle cannot be the future of humanity,” he declared.
Source: Radio Havana Cuba, translation Ed Newman