Statement by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, During the Consideration of Item 37 of the Agenda of the United Nations General Assembly Entitled “Necessity of Ending the Economic, Commercial and Financial Blockade Imposed by the United States of America against Cuba”. New York, October 28, 2026
Mr. President, Excellencies, Permanent Representatives, distinguished delegates:
I wish to express my condolences to the Kingdom of Spain for the loss of life in the train accident in Toledo. I also wish to commend the President of the General Assembly for the way in which he upheld the Assembly’s Rules of Procedure yesterday.
I must denounce the disrespectful and provocative conduct of the United States delegation in this hall yesterday—specifically, the harassment and unauthorized filming of our delegation by one of their officials, which required the intervention of United Nations security personnel. Such actions are incompatible with the decorum, respect for personal dignity and privacy that should prevail in this hall; furthermore, they constitute a maneuver aimed at undermining an important Cuban candidacy for a United Nations body.
I denounce the presence in this hall of a known terrorist—an individual responsible for acts of terrorism against Cuba and a representative of two terrorist organizations based on United States soil—who was invited by the United States Permanent Mission to the United Nations. He is number 52 on the list of individuals internationally wanted by the Republic of Cuba for acts of terrorism, as established by legal resolution and the Official Gazette.
He is also a criminal, guilty of fraud, who has received substantial funding from the United States government, which he then diverted for personal use. Mr. President, I ask that you request the United Nations Secretariat to verify the status under which this individual is present in the gallery, and I demand his immediate removal. It is an affront, Mr. President, to all victims of terrorism—including the victims of September 11th and the Cuban victims of terrorist acts organized and financed from United States territory. It is an outrage and clear proof that it is not Cuba that should be included on the infamous list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Ambassadors, delegates:
Yesterday’s speech by the representative of the United States of America makes the task of our Assembly and my own responsibility to articulate the positions of the Republic of Cuba, somewhat easier.
He made famous the phrase, “This is America.” This was no slip of the tongue, nor merely an erroneous or unlawful conceptualization. This is the United Nations—the United Nations Organization—the capital of multilateralism, the heart of an international order that ought to be grounded in International Law and the UN Charter; this is the most universal and democratic body within the United Nations.
That phrase reflects a worldview that treats the entire planet as if it were part of U.S. territory; it views Cuba—and all of you—as if you were something close to one of the 50 states of the Union. It is the foundation for the concept of “peace through force” the imposition of peace through force.
Cuba is not a threat; the blockade is. It reveals the cynicism and hypocrisy involved in labeling Cuba an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security of the planet’s greatest nuclear power.
The United States representative also uttered another significant statement yesterday that brings matters into sharper focus: he claimed that “the blockade against Cuba does not exist.”
Every minute spent on procedural delays—every minute of our deliberations—implies extraordinary harm upon our people. This cannot be measured by the clock in this chamber; rather—and I ask the webcast to zoom in—it can be measured by this counter which tracks the damage caused by the blockade against Cuba since the start of yesterday’s session, calculated in current U.S. dollars. Since this session began, the damage inflicted by the blockade has amounted to more than 22.9 million dollars.
Mr. President;
A great power is attacking a member State of this organization -a small, independent, peace-loving and fraternal nation- by submitting it to an economic warfare. It does so with the purpose of imposing its domination and a “change of regime”. This aggression includes a fuel blockade, which is equivalent to a naval blockade and is an act of war, an act of collective punishment and a genocide proscribed by International Law. Its dire consequences are harmful to persons, restrict their fundamental rights, affect third countries and turn the basic needs of the people into instruments of political coercion.
Its consequences are felt on the dining table of Cuban families, in the bed of the ill; in the delivery of a child or in an operating room; in nutrition; in a child’s classroom; in the lack of electricity, potable water and medicines; in the prices of the goods that are indispensable to human life.
The General Assembly has been taking a stand on this item since 1992, but right now it is doing so amidst new and extraordinary circumstances. The US government has unleashed a wave of pressures, intimidation and blackmail against many member States with a coercive, illegal, immoral and unwarranted demand to change their traditional stance and adopt a position that is contrary to the well-founded stance they had been adopting for decades as a sovereign act of State. I can prove it with a document I have with me. It is likely in the possession of many of you.
It's about an attempt to define the position of the General Assembly in light of the use of intimidation and unilateral coercive measures to try to dictate to the rest of member States what to say and how to vote; which nations they can freely trade with and which they cannot freely trade with; where their shipping companies can forward cargo to and where they cannot forward cargo to; which countries they can have financial relations with and which countries they cannot have financial relations with.
Today, those pressures are aimed against Cuba. What other State would these pressures be aimed against tomorrow?
It is also an attempt to define whether or not the United Nations condone or accept collective punishment and the determination to crush the political will of a sovereign State through economic suffocation, starvation, hardships and desperation against an entire population or the destruction of a nation.
Everybody knows that the government of the United States has reinforced to extreme levels the aggression against Cuba since early on this year, with the aspiration, expressed both publicly and officially, to take hold of the country, control its economy and exercise its domination. It has openly resorted to the threat of the use of military force and has imposed tens of new economic coercive measures in addition to the ones that have existed for decades, which have been tightened to extreme levels since 2019 and turned into a sort of medieval siege since January last.
Since the month of July, the aggression has acquired a new and stark dimension, which has included new efforts by the US government to hinder, obstruct and sabotage the ambitious program of economic and social transformations which our country has sovereignly designed as part of its economic and entrepreneurial transformations to adapt to the nefarious economic changes and face the economic warfare imposed on us. Against all odds, we will do it for the benefit and the dignity of all Cubans.
The Secretary of State, when referring to the efforts being made by Cuba, stated publicly on August 7 last, and I quote: “What we are trying to teach them is there are no escape valves…Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off”, end of quote.
The most widely used and manipulated pretext by the US government to try to justify its actions is to portray Cuba as an alleged threat to the nuclear superpower or even to the hemisphere. It is well known that no government represented here would admit or accept such a gross fallacy. They have no arguments to support that assertion.
In addition to other considerations that are well known and obvious, the US government can attest to the fact -and it could recognize it if it acts with honesty- that Cuba has contributed to the national security priorities of that country.
Throughout the years and on several occasions, the Cuban government has contributed sensitive information to the US government in relation to threats associated to drug-trafficking, terrorism and other transnational crimes with a potential impact on the United States and the region. This is an information contributed even in recent times despite the manifest hostility of this administration.
The fuel blockade is an act of collective punishment that threatens the life of Cubans.
The mendacious allegations against Cuba are well known, and none can withstand even the slightest scrutiny. As a pretext, they add fanciful accusations regarding inequalities, the alleged hoarding of wealth, and favored elites. This comes from the largest and most corrupt plutocracy in history—a system where money, rather than the electorate, holds sway, and which possesses the world’s largest and most politically influential military-industrial complex—a feature that this dysfunctional democracy itself recognizes as a danger.
They also wield as a pretext the fact that Cuba allegedly practices slavery or trafficking in persons, which are slanderous assertions against the medical staff and the international health cooperation program in more than 50 of the States represented here. They are exerting cruel pressures and resorting to blackmail to abort those programs.
The blockade kills and punishes our population silently, as never before. Since the onset of the "maximum pressure" policy, our infant mortality rate has doubled. These are not just statistics or figures; they are children, lives cut short at birth, bringing immense pain to their families.
Many of you are either mothers or fathers. You know that no statistics can express what it means for a parent not to have the medicine that a child needs; or what it means for a family to wait for a surgery that is postponed.
Seventy percent of the Essential Medicines List is lacking and around 100 000 persons, of them more than 12 000 children, are awaiting surgery. It is for those children and their relatives in Cuba that we are here. And we are also here for our selfless, closely united, cultured, conscious, noble, fraternal patriotic and dignified people who keep moving on; who wake up every day, overcoming every obstacle, looking for solutions and becoming part of those resolutions with dedicated effort.
No people deserve the suffering and abuse that are being imposed on us today.
This is a medication called Pemetrexed. It is manufactured by the company Lilly, here in the United States. It is used to treat lung cancer. In my country, there are patients who need it and do not have it, not because it doesn’t exist; not because we cannot pay for it. We don’t have it because it is manufactured in the United States and the blockade prevents us from buying it.
The number of persons dying of cancer in Cuba has significantly increased. Although Cuba’s survival rates continue to be higher than those of the majority of low and middle-income countries and the rates established by the World Health Organization, these have decreased in recent years. In the case of children and youths, survival rates dropped from 85 per cent to 65 per cent. The trend coincides with the toughest moments of the oil siege.
By contrast, this other medication is called Neuralcim. It´s a Cuban product. Why does the blockade against Cuba prevent 7 million US citizens from receiving the benefits of Neuralcim, a Cuban medication that can slow down the progression of Alzheimer, senile dementia and neuro-degenerative diseases with proven and unparalleled effectiveness as compared to similar therapies?
The US absurd policy is blockading everything that sustains life; it blockades this medication to fight cancer and also blockades this other medication that carries a molecule that helps thousands of persons to slow down the painful process of forgetting.
We are not speaking about numbers in this report. We are speaking about lives and healing opportunities, tragedies and traumas, the daily anxieties of the medical and the health staff.
Power generation by mobile facilities and fuel and diesel-powered stand-by stations in the country decreased drastically.
Eighty five percent of potable water pumping systems in Cuba are powered by electricity. The impact resulting from the lack of fuel has caused that almost 2.6 million persons have difficulties to access water and in some areas the impact is extreme.
The government of the United States hindered the delivery of 7 000 containers which had been paid for even by Cuban private companies, most of them carrying foodstuffs, medicines and inputs for hemodialysis procedures could not arrive in our ports.
The persecution of shipping companies, the interdiction of vessels and the imposition of secondary sanctions against anyone interacting with Cuba, violate the rules of international trade and freedom of navigation.
According to several polls and surveys of digital talks, 6 out of 10 US citizens wish to normalize relations with Cuba, oppose a military action or are against “seizing” the Island and do not trust the decisions of their government. Fifty percent are against the fuel blockade as opposed to only 25 per cent that supports it. In the social conversation, in the last weeks, 72% of U.S. citizens—the taxpayers who fund this mission, the voters who elect governments—oppose the blockade against Cuba.
The US government has no right or prerogative to govern the Cuban population, interfere in the internal affairs of the country, decide the destiny of the nation, impose its will on the people, appropriate the nation’s wealth or exercise its domain on the national territory.
The scarce, draconian and onerous exceptions to the blockade by means of very limited government licenses do not prove that the blockade does not exist. They prove exactly the opposite.
The misleading figure of $100 million in humanitarian aid—of which only a few hundred thousand dollars have actually reached Cuba—is equivalent (even if the full $100 million were to arrive) to the economic damage caused by the embargo in just five days; it would only be enough to fund limited electricity generation for a mere two weeks. We welcome this humanitarian aid and hope that no attempts will be made to manipulate it for political purposes. However, humanitarian aid cannot serve as a substitute for Cuba’s right to trade free from U.S. sanctions and political manipulation.
We are convinced that a respectful and cooperative relationship with the United States would be beneficial for the people of Cuba and also for the American people—for their interests, their well-being, and their natural desires for peace. It would, furthermore, be beneficial for the peoples of "Our America" and the hemisphere.
The measures adopted against my country have been designed to cause the greatest possible damage in the shortest possible time against an entire people. They are not like the so called and unacceptable “collateral damages”. These are deliberately inflicted damages, by design and by a political decision.
There is an attempt to bring about a humanitarian crisis in Cuba and use it as a weapon. We have prevented it and we will continue to prevent it thanks to community solidarity, the understanding and democratic participation of persons in the adoption and implementation of economic and social measures; of popular organizations and the civil society; the efficiency of the People’s Power bodies and government management; and thanks to our comparative advantages and a swift and significant investment in photovoltaic energy; the increase in the production of national crude oil and the development of the technology required to refine it; and the guaranteed power generation for hospitals, water pumping stations and social centers.
Also, through the efficient reorganization of health and educational services; the implementation of intensive and effective social policies; the protection of low income and vulnerable persons; the development of electric means of transportation; the growth and increased social commitment of the private sector; the increase in the number of planted areas and the use of agroecology.
This General Assembly must decide, in few minutes, whether it is acceptable or reprehensible for the crime against Cuba and its people to continue, and whether or not a superpower should be allowed to persist in its attempt to impose its will upon the political decisions and sovereign rights of the rest of the international community, of each of the States that you represent.
For Cuba, there is no either-or choice. Under the guidance of the leader of the Cuban Revolution, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz and of President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, we will persist in the defense of our independence and national sovereignty and the rejection of the ambitions of conquest and domination by an imperialist power. We´ll do so because these are part of the inalienable rights and unrenounceable obligations of Cuba, the Cuban nation. We are supported by the International Law and the United Nations Charter.
What Cuba demands is to be allowed to live in peace, that the Cuban people be allowed to live in peace, to resolve their own problems in peace and find solutions to the great difficulties of today’s world, free from any political, military, cognitive or economic aggression.
Cuba is not a threat! The blockade is!
The energy blockade is an act of collective punishment.
Therefore, as we proceed to consider draft resolution A/81/L.5—which I have the honor to present on behalf of the heroic, solidarity-minded, and noble Cuban people—each country will demonstrate its own sense of justice and courage, both before the world and before its own peoples.
In the year marking the centennial birthday of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro Ruz, we repeat with him: Homeland or Death, We Shall Overcome!
Thank you, very much.