New York, 29 October 2025. – Cuba achieved a resounding victory in the United Nations General Assembly, with 167 countries endorsing its call for the immediate and definitive end to the economic, financial, and commercial blockade imposed by the United States. Neither the pressures, the deceptive maneuvers of the empire, nor the toxicity of digital platforms and oligarchic media could overshadow the force of Cuba’s truth, which once again triumphed in the plenary, while the US delegation remained isolated in its own labyrinth of fallacies and contradictions.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, denounced before the Assembly the material damages caused by the blockade—which between 1 March 2024 and 28 February 2025 amounted to 7,556.1 million dollars—and emphasized Cuba’s resistance and dignity in the face of the State Department’s attempts at coercion and manipulation. The day reaffirmed that the blockade policy remains in force, that the world rejects it, and that, as the Chancellor highlighted, Cuba will not surrender, persisting in denouncing this infamy and exercising its right to decide its own destiny with determination.
Below is the full speech of the Cuban Chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla.
Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Cuba, Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, at the presentation of Draft Resolution A/80/L.X, entitled “Necessity of ending the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.” New York, 29 October 2025.
Madam President:
I express deep condolences and solidarity to the governments and peoples of Jamaica, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic, who have suffered loss of life due to Hurricane Melissa. Also to Panama, which has suffered some losses from intense rains, and our best wishes to the Bahamas and Bermuda.
I speak on behalf of a people who right now, with scarce resources, practically only with will, unity, and solidarity, face a monstrous hurricane. As the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Raúl Castro Ruz, said last night, and I quote: “…before this new challenge, we will also emerge victorious.”
We have heard the infamous, threatening, arrogant, lying, and cynical speech of the new Permanent Representative of the United States, who is not in the room. This is what we expected, knowing where this character comes from and his murky ties with the Secretary of State, the military contractor mafias, and the political clique of Miami.
Yesterday, from this podium, he said he would refer to facts, but he did exactly the opposite. I will only recall what he seems to ignore despite his responsibilities, or worse, what he perhaps distorts with a mendacious spirit: The laws and norms of economic aggression of his country against Cuba are unambiguous in their actions and ambitions. They openly declare in law the goal of restricting Cuba’s trade, investment, and credit relations with all countries. They also establish, in law, the obligation of US diplomats to comply with this mandate in their contacts with officials of the governments you represent.
I would recommend that my colleagues from the United States read Title I and Title III of the Helms-Burton Act and the content of the Torricelli Act.
Actions speak for themselves, and I will refer to them clearly. This Assembly will be able to determine for itself, as it has done for 33 years, whether or not it is facing an economic blockade.
In recent weeks, the deployment of pressure, intimidation, and toxicity by the State Department, on a planetary scale, to force sovereign states to change their vote on the resolution we will adopt today has been brutal and unprecedented. They have used all their weapons and tricks, especially coercion.
But truth, Law, reason, and justice are always more powerful and forceful.
It cannot be hidden that, by virtue of the criminal policy of the US government against Cuba, my country is viciously deprived, in any corner of the world, of the use of banking systems to make collections and payments.
It is deprived of access to current financing sources; investment capital; remittances; technology for industry, food production, infrastructure, scientific development, and services, including the most sensitive ones, such as health.
The strategic purpose of the blockade is to provoke a social explosion leading to the overthrow of the constitutional order that Cubans have freely decided in several referendums.
The Secretary of State is the evil, corrupt, and fraudulent reincarnation of Mallory, and the Permanent Representative has become his spokesperson. As is known, the impact of this type of aggression is not only economic. It is applied by design, with cold premeditation regarding its social and humanitarian impact on millions of people.
In Cuba, for example, in recent years—and I say this with pain—there has been a deterioration in some health indicators that, although still notable for a developing country and comparable with those of industrialized countries, are now lower than the indices that our country was progressively able to achieve.
One example is infant mortality, which after consecutive years with rates below 5 per 1,000 live births, stands at 8.5 in the first half of this year.
One would have to lie, as the Permanent Representative of the United States has done, to divorce that result from the impact that the economic blockade has on sustaining the health system, just as life expectancy, maternal mortality, or the availability of highly subsidized medicines for the population cannot be separated from it.
Only between 1 March 2024 and 28 February last, the blockade caused Cuba approximately 7,556.1 million dollars in material damages and losses. It is an impact similar to the nominal Gross Domestic Product of at least 30 countries represented here according to World Bank data.
But the damages of the blockade are not only expressed in numbers and material losses but in the daily life of our compatriots. No person, family, or sector escapes its daily and devastating effects.
Dailiannis, a 29-year-old Cuban with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, which may pose a risk to her life, requires the implantation of an automatic defibrillator to which Cuba has no access. Dailiannis and so many other Cuban patients with similar pathologies remain waiting for this type of implant.
The child Abdiel, 6 years old, needs a hip operation that requires a bone graft. This tissue is produced at the Tissue Bank of the "Frank País" Hospital, but the indispensable lyophilization process is paralyzed due to the lack of a sensor. It has not been possible to buy it, even having the money to pay for it, because the companies that supply it, faced with the blockade against Cuba, refuse to sell it according to the usual practices of trade.
These are not collateral damages. They are not isolated cases. They are daily experiences. They are innocent human beings who suffer.
The creativity of our institutions and the professionals who work in them is extraordinary and very meritorious, but the anguish generated for Cuban families cannot be calculated, nor the tension it supposes for the public health system, not being able to count on these medicines or medical supplies when required.
An essential part of the tightening of the blockade has been, since 2019, the increased persecution of fuel supply operations, including shipping companies, insurers, banks, and governments, which has caused Cuba to reduce suppliers and exponentially increase prices.
Blackouts are today one of the most visible and painful impacts of the economic blockade in Cuba, with a daily effect on families, sometimes desperate. It impacts other sectors, such as water supply, production processes, services, and the economy as a whole, all of which weighs on the population.
A few months ago, a corporation and a friendly government declared it impossible to supply a spare part and mere technical assistance to repair a Cuban thermoelectric plant due to the threat of US sanctions.
Another vital sector of the economy particularly harmed is tourism. Today, citizens from more than 40 countries are intimidated, threatened with reprisals by the US government and the prohibition of access to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization or visas (ESTA), if by virtue of the elementary exercise of their rights they decide to visit Cuba.
The US government not only deprives its own citizens of the right to travel to Cuba but aims and succeeds, through coercion, in depriving citizens of other countries not under its jurisdiction, especially European citizens.
One of the measures with the greatest impact is the unjustifiable presence of Cuba on the unilateral and arbitrary list published by the US government of states that supposedly sponsor terrorism.
Cuba is a country victim of terrorism. We have demonstrated this before in this Assembly. For years and still today, terrorist acts are organized and financed against the country from US territory. Recognized perpetrators of horrible acts of aggression against the Cuban people live here peacefully and with absolute impunity, with a toll of thousands of deaths, mutilated, and considerable material damage. In 2023, we delivered to the US government the names and data of 62 terrorists and 20 terrorist organizations that operate against Cuba from this country, and they have done nothing to date.
The economic war includes a comprehensive destabilization program—I will denounce these actions for the first time—includes a comprehensive destabilization program organized, financed, and executed directly by the US government, using Cuban-origin operators based in this and other countries.
They have the mission, the task, of depressing the population's income level through speculative manipulation of the currency exchange rate, with a direct effect on price increases, the propagation of intimidating and alarmist messages on networks, and thus altering the natural behavior of the market. The effect is severe damage to the income of every Cuban and additional obstacles to macroeconomic stabilization programs.
To this end, money laundering of the US federal budget is incurred, using funds allocated by the US Congress and used by the State Department, non-governmental organizations, and contractors that channel them.
Our government has irrefutable evidence about these operations, with data, names, contacts, communications, and the direct involvement of the US government and its diplomats. This is a criminal activity against International Law, Cuban laws, and even US laws.
The United States has tried to sell the idea that the blockade is a justification of the Cuban government to hide its inefficiencies or the errors of its development model.
This political campaign is sustained by a communicational and digital operation that, through toxic disinformation, euphemisms, selective silences, and coordinated message saturation, seeks to install the perception that the blockade does not exist or does not affect the population.
The US government not only attempts to deny or minimize the blockade effect but also penalizes those who document its effects, resorting to discrediting campaigns, cyber troops paid with "regime change" funds, and algorithmic censorship by its own technology platforms regarding Cuban national content.
Anyone who denies that, without the blockade, Cuba's economic problems would have a better and faster solution would be lying and will lie.
In fact, the very promoters of the blockade and maximum pressure policy boast of its destructive effect and the capacity to hit the standard of living of an entire people. Review the statements of the US Secretary of State and the politicians who have made a career and fortune with aggression against Cuba.
If the US government has any minimal concern about "helping the Cuban people," it should suspend or make humanitarian exceptions to the blockade due to the damages that Hurricane Melissa will cause and is causing.
Cuba is a country of peace. No one in their right mind and with a minimum of honesty can allege that Cuba represents or intends to represent a threat to the national security of the United States, a great power, and the well-being of the American people.
Which country has aggressively, extraordinarily, and unjustifiably deployed military forces in the Caribbean Sea while we deliberate here? Which one threatens the peace, security, and stability of the region, and especially the peace and the right to self-determination of the brotherly Venezuelan people? Which one has adopted the criminal practice of committing assassinations on the high seas or within the jurisdictional waters of other countries at the hands of its armed forces, as occurs today in the Caribbean or the Pacific? Which one has our region full of military bases? Who openly articulates aggressive subversion and regime change plans against progressive governments? Which government is the direct accomplice, supplier of weapons and financing for the genocide in Gaza?
If the US government wished to contribute to peace in "Our America," it should withdraw the military threat and accept a civilized dialogue, without preconditions or impositions, with Venezuela, with Colombia, with Nicaragua, with Cuba, and with all with whom it has differences, and, collectively, with the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.
The blockade is a policy of collective punishment. It qualifies as an act of genocide. It flagrantly, massively, and systematically violates the human rights of Cubans. It does not distinguish between social sectors or economic actors.
I deeply thank those who in this debate and in the high-level segment of the 80th session of the General Assembly raised their voices to call for an end to the blockade and the removal of our country from the infamous list of state sponsors of terrorism.
I also thank the regional and concertation groups that, throughout the year, have made solid statements in this regard; the numerous organizations and solidarity movements with Cuba around the world; the Americans who advocate for a relationship based on respect and sovereign equality between both countries.
I acknowledge the expressions of Cubans in the United States and everywhere in the world who, with their statements and their solidarity and patriotic actions, oppose and fight against the blockade.
Cuba will not surrender.
We will persist in denouncing the infamy and outrage. We will exercise with determination the right to decide our destiny. We will continue the effort to overcome our current difficulties and ensure the economic sustainability of the country, even with the continuation or even further strengthening of the blockade.
With José Martí, our people reaffirm today that “…before yielding in the endeavor to make the Homeland prosperous and free, the southern sea will unite with the northern sea and a serpent will be born from an eagle's egg.”
And with Antonio Maceo: “whoever attempts to appropriate Cuba will gather the dust of its soil soaked in blood, if they do not perish in the struggle.”
And with Fidel Castro Ruz, we exclaim again: Homeland or Death, We Will Win.
Madam President:
In the name of the noble and solidarity-driven Cuban people, who for decades have been writing an admirable feat of patriotism, justice, resistance, creation, and sacrifice, I respectfully request the Member States to vote in favor of draft A/80/L.6, entitled “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States of America against Cuba.”
It will be, distinguished Ambassadors, Sir delegates, an act of justice in favor of a peaceful people who today face, like the blockade, another monstrous hurricane.
Thank you very much.
(Transcription by Cubaminrex)